Weekend Box Office - Rio Flies High, Scream Whimpers

It's been a good year to be a computer animated movie. Well, relatively speaking. While overall sales numbers continue to slump, CG entries have floated to the top to take number one four weekends so far this year. And three of those movies currently rank in the top five money makers of the year to date with newcomer Rio hot on their heels.

Taking the top spot this week with $40 million, Rio banked the biggest opening of the year so far. That left the far more anticpated Scream 4 grasping at whatever leftover ticket stub scraps it could get.

With a painfully distant $19 million second place, the fourth entry in the Scream franchise might as well have been named Whimper 4. The mediocre debut is the lowest since the original opened in 1996 and may well signal the end of any hopes for a comeback. Not that anyone's complaining.

Histodrama The Conspirator made a quiet bow-in, launching in just 700 theaters and sneaking in at ninth place just above last weekend's debacled Your Highness.